Kim Yun-Kyo, Ramalho-Santos Miguel
Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto ON M5G 0A4, Canada; Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto ON M5G 1X5, Canada.
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto ON M5T 3L9, Canada; Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto ON M5G 1X5, Canada.
Stem Cell Reports. 2025 Mar 11;20(3):102406. doi: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2025.102406. Epub 2025 Feb 6.
Transcriptional profiling of stem cells came of age at the beginning of the century with the use of microarrays to analyze cell populations in bulk. Since then, stem cell transcriptomics has become increasingly sophisticated, notably with the recent widespread use of single-cell RNA sequencing. Here, we provide a perspective on how an early signature of genes upregulated in embryonic and adult stem cells, identified using microarrays over 20 years ago, serendipitously led to the recent discovery that stem/progenitor cells across organs are in a state of hypertranscription, a global elevation of the transcriptome. Looking back, we find that the 2002 stemness signature is a robust marker of stem cell hypertranscription, even though it was developed well before it was known what hypertranscription meant or how to detect it. We anticipate that studies of stem cell hypertranscription will be rich in novel insights in physiological and disease contexts for years to come.
本世纪初，随着利用微阵列技术对细胞群体进行整体分析，干细胞转录谱分析应运而生。从那时起，干细胞转录组学变得越来越复杂，特别是随着近年来单细胞RNA测序的广泛应用。在此，我们探讨了一个现象：20多年前通过微阵列技术鉴定出的胚胎干细胞和成体干细胞中上调基因的早期特征，意外地促成了近期一项发现，即跨器官的干/祖细胞处于转录亢进状态，也就是转录组的整体升高。回顾过去，我们发现2002年的干性特征是干细胞转录亢进的一个可靠标志物，尽管它是在人们还不知道转录亢进是什么意思或者如何检测它之前就开发出来的。我们预计，在未来几年里，对干细胞转录亢进的研究将在生理和疾病背景方面带来丰富的新见解。
